Version 1.3

The documentation in this page corresponds to the version 1.3 of the PSICQUIC specification.

Using SOAP is the traditional way to access a web service. The PSICQUIC specification defines a standard WSDL that all the implementations must comply with. This file contains the list of web service methods available for users.

The SOAP URL for the different interaction databases can be found in the Registry. To fetch the WSDL just append ?wsdl to the SOAP URL (example).

Important note: the maximum number of interactions in XML format that can be returned by a SOAP request is 500. If you want to retrieve more results, do an iteration of requests incrementing the firstResult parameter by 500 until you reach the total number of results.

Differences from previous versions

From version 1.2

The WSDL file has not been updated so the SOAP methods are the same as for 1.2 and 1.1.

psi-mi/tab26 and psi-mi/tab27 are now accepted. The ResultSet returned by the SOAP service will contain the MITAB (2.5, 2.6 or 2.7) as a String (same as for the previous versions explaining why the WSDL file has not been updated since version 1.1)

When returning MITAB (2.5, 2.6 or 2.7), there is no limit in the number of binary interactions returned by the SOAP service as it is doing some pagination internally. However, the maximum number of interaction to be returned in XML is 500. If the user ask for more than 500 results in XML, the SOAP service will return a 400 HTTP error code.

From version 1.1

None. As the REST implementation has changed, we also updated the SOAP version. The WSDL file is the same as for version 1.1

From version 1.0

Methods to retrieve properties from the service have been added. These properties are used by the provider to define characteristics of the service.

Method Summary

Retrieve data using a list of participant identifiers. This method can be used to retrieve interactions where the two or more participants passed as arguments are found. To do so, set the operand to AND.

Other methods to retrieve information about the service itself (metadata) are also available:

Method Name

Description

getSupportedReturnTypes

Returns the list of possible formats for the retrieved data

getSupportedDbAcs

Supported database accessions

getVersion

Gets the version of the service

getProperties

Retrieve a list of the property objects defined in a service by the provider. Each property object have a key and a value

getProperty

Retrieve a property from the service

Methods

This section explains the parameters that can be used in the above methods.

Method: getByQuery

Description: Retrieves data using a MIQL query. This is the more general method an can be used to perform the most flexible queries by using MIQL. The other methods of the web service are just convenience methods that just reduce the scope of the query, hence what the other methods do can be done through this one.

Complex object containing the resulting data and some metadata about the results

Method: getByInteractorList

Description: Retrieve data using a list of participant identifiers. This method can be used to retrieve interactions where the two or more participants passed as arguments are found. To do so, set the operand to AND.

When multiple identifiers are provided two options are possible, dependening if we want to (a) find the interaction where ALL the provided identifiers are found or (b) just get a list of interactions where ANY of the identifiers is found. For (a) the value of operand is ‘AND’, whereas for (b) is ‘OR’ (default)

Number of results to be returned. Maximum is 200, so higher values will be ignored.

0

When doing queries, the results must be paginated to avoid memory problems. All methods accept the parameters firstResult and blockSize, which are used to define the starting interaction and the number of interactions to be retrieved. Use them to retrieve your data in batches.

queryResponse

Information about the query, such as the total number of results found

resultSet

Name

Type

Description

mitab

String

When the psi-mi/tab25, psi-mi/tab26 or psi-mi/tab27 format is used, this element contains the resulting data as a String in MITAB format. Lines are separated by a carriage return.

entrySet

PSI-MI XML 2.5

When the psi-mi/xml25 format is used, the XML file with the results is embedded in the response

resultInfo

Name

Type

Description

firstResult

Integer

The offset used when querying the service

blockSize

Integer

The number of results returned. If the service returns a different number of results than those asked for (e.g. the number provided was higher than the server maximum), this value shows how much data was returned by the service

totalResults

Integer

The total number of interaction evidences found, irrespectively of the firstResult and blockSize.

Querying the service

To query the SOAP service specific libraries may be needed by your programs. There is a JAVA client already implemented, but if you are not using JAVA you may need to create the service yourself (and if it is generic, contributing it to the project would be great!).

When doing queries, the results in XML must be paginated to avoid memory problems. All methods accept the parameters firstResult and maxResults, which are used to define the starting interaction and the number of interactions to be retrieved. Use them to retrieve your data in batches.